Pug Hill - Alison Pace [58]
“What news about May?”
“You haven’t heard?”
“No.”
“It is hunch, she has not told us anything officially, of course, and well I guess that’s clear because then you would have heard, of course.” Yeah, I think, of course, and Sergei continues. “But the word is that she is taking a sabbatical for a year. While she’s gone, one would think she will put one of us in charge.”
“A promotion?” I ask softly.
“Yes,” he says, and we both nod seriously. Promotion isn’t a word often heard in Paintings Conservation at the Met. It takes so long to get here, and it’s such a good job to have, that no one ever leaves. Even if it would be just for a year, a promotion would be a pretty big deal.
“Wow, well thanks for telling me.” I turn and slink slowly back to my desk to let the news sink in. I’m upset of course that I didn’t know. I bemoan ever so briefly the pitfalls that inevitably pop up when you spend so much time in the background, the background even of your own life.
I think about the promotion and I think how each one of us is a contender. This morning it appears, pretty blatantly, that maybe Elliot is bucking for a promotion. He is always the first person here, and he is always the last person to leave. It occurs to me again how that even though Paintings Conservation isn’t a race, he has gotten through three Old Master landscapes in the time it has taken me to basically just get started on the Rothko. But, on that, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: going over the contemporary problems, the problems of today, can be a lot harder than the problems of the past. I flip through my brushes until I find the smallest one. I sit back and stare, and try again to focus. I try to remember where I was when I left off.
It’s no use. I sit back and instead of focusing on the Rothko, I think about this new element of competition in our workplace. I look up suspiciously at Elliot, then over at Sergei. Both Sergei and Elliot could be given May’s job while she is gone. Sergei’s been here longer than I have, and even though Elliot hasn’t even been here for a year, he used to be Head Restorer at the Brooklyn Museum. And also, to get a promotion after only being here for, what, five months: such is the way of Elliot.
I think of May, the nicest boss I think anyone has ever had.
She’s always fostered an environment so free of competition and office politics—not that paintings restoration is such a hotbed of office politics or anything—that this new feeling of competition in the workplace is very strange, very foreign indeed. I think a bit dramatically, even for me, that everyone is the enemy. But then, of course, they’re really not, because May is so great to work for, and learn from, and the whole earth-mama-flowy-dress-dangly-earring look really appears so much more genuine on her, like it’s the way it should be, than it does on someone like Beth Anne who, dressed all flowy like that, in my mind, winds up looking somewhat fraudulent. And Sergei is not really the enemy because he is, well, he’s just lovely. And Elliot isn’t the enemy because, as I might have mentioned, I love him.
I put my paintbrush away and look over at Elliot.
“Did you know that May might be leaving?” I say across the room to Elliot. He pauses, stares at his canvas for a moment, making some sort of conscientious Elliot-type mental note before looking up and squinting at me.
“Of course I knew,” he says, and the way he says it, it’s just so matter-of-factly that you could almost miss the slight condescending tone. But I choose not to, and I think, in this case, that’s a good thing.
“Whatever happens though,” he continues and the “whatever,” it sounds so ominous to me, “the good news is that we’ll get another restorer in here, someone with more time to actually restore than May has. We might even catch up one day.” He nods in the direction of the paintings lining the eastern wall of the room. I think it is a very good thing he didn’t just nod in the direction of the Rothko.
Suddenly, Elliot doesn’t look quite as perfect, quite as ideal, quite